A gift for mercurialkitty for winning my 221 followers giveaway on tumblr.
Her prompt was: "Take a mundane, domestic event and have it lead to an unexpected reveal. Johnlock but before they're admitting it. Some angst okay as long as there's a happy ending." Hope this fits the bill.
Smooches to somebodyswatson, i-ship-an-armada, and wiggleofjudas for quick and insightful betawork. Ladies, you are the best.
The truth can be a tricky thing. Sudden revelations are generally unpleasant, sometimes even turn violent. Most people don't want a bucket full of truth, or even a teacup of truth at once. Most people measure out the truth in teaspoons.
Sherlock Holmes drops you in an ocean of truth and expects you to swim.
John's getting used to it now, the lightning-fast paragraphs of deduction that spring from his mouth, a river of truth that never stops flowing. He swims quite well.
xXx
John had never seen Sherlock eat so much, with such enthusiasm. The man was scarfing down chicken vindaloo like he was actually, possibly hungry.
John scanned the boxes of take away strewn across the coffee table.
"There's, ah, more saag paneer," he offered casually.
"Yes," Sherlock answered with eager eyes, and John couldn't hide a smile as he passed it over to him.
"What?" Sherlock asked, though his eyes stayed on his plate.
"Nothing. I just." He paused. "It's nice to see you actually eating."
God, that sounded motherly, he thought, but it's not like Sherlock couldn't have guessed what was going through his mind at that moment. They had only been living together for a few months, but John was already firmly in the habit of urging Sherlock to take better care of himself.
Sherlock shrugged, and continued devouring his food. He tore a piece of naan off and pushed the fluffy bread into the sauces on his plate, mixing them together and sopping them up. John watched as Sherlock lifted it to his mouth, took it in and pressed it against his palate before chewing, and he imagined the flavors there melding against his own tongue. Such a visceral, physical moment seemed unlike his cerebral friend, but John figured Sherlock had to balance himself out somehow, find the yin to his yang.
And the case had been stultifyingly cerebral; embezzlement, poring over financial records, unraveling encrypted puzzles-mentally exhausting business all the way around, for John certainly, but even for Sherlock. The moment they arrived home, John changed into flannel pajama bottoms and a dark grey t-shirt, padding around the flat barefoot for the rest of the evening. Sherlock had done the same, with the addition of his deep blue dressing gown.
It had become their post-case ritual-take away, beer, telly or a DVD, and then sleeping like the dead. But John hadn't seen his flatmate pack away this amount of food since . . . ever.
Sherlock smacked his lips and leaned over the table, peering into the rest of the boxes, only to find that every last morsel had been eaten, and he looked puzzled, as though he didn't remember having nearly inhaled the lion's share of everything they'd ordered.
The man actually looked disappointed.
John scrambled up from his seat across the table. "Mrs. Hudson's lemon cake."
Sherlock's eyes brightened and he smiled, the rare, unguarded smile that John had only seen a handful of times. He grinned back and walked off towards the kitchen, feeling strangely giddy.
John brought down two plates from the cupboard to the counter, took a knife and sliced generous chunks of the lemon pound cake Mrs. Hudson had brought up for them earlier. John was completely full, but the cake called to him with its promise of dense, buttery richness and sweet but tart icing.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when Sherlock popped up behind him, reaching around John with one long arm to take the plate with the larger slice, and John let out a giggle.
"You're ridiculous," he blurted. "You just ate half a stone's worth in food and you're about to eat-"
"Pound cake?" Sherlock said with a lift of his eyebrows, and then they were both giggling until John actually had tears forming in his eyes.
"Come on," Sherlock said, picking up the piece of cake with his hand, lifting it to his mouth and taking a big bite. He started walking back to the sitting room.
"'Come on,' what?" John asked as he followed, deciding if his posh flatmate could go forkless, so could he.
"Well, I assume you're going to suggest yet another ridiculous film for me to sit through; may as well get on with it," Sherlock reasoned, plopping down on the sofa.
One corner of John's mouth pulled up. "Yeah. All right," he conceded. He set his plate on the table and went over to grab Patriot Games from the bookshelf next to the fireplace and pop it into the machine.
He walked back and dropped down in his accustomed spot next to Sherlock, who already had his feet up on the table and had eaten half his cake without managing to get a single crumb on himself.
By the time John skipped through the trailers to get to the menu and hit play, Sherlock had finished his cake and deposited the plate on the coffee table next to the empty take away boxes.
John turned to his friend. He might have been gaping a bit.
"Yes, mummy, I cleaned my plate. Do I get a treat now?" Sherlock said sarcastically, rolling his eyes a bit.
John gave him a look for the "mummy" bit, but then smiled a little and shook his head. "If I thought any of that would actually lead to you achieving a healthy weight, yes, you'd get a treat, but it never seems to stick to you."
Sherlock just shrugged.
"How can you eat like that and stay thin as a rail and Mycroft has to eat like a rabbit?" John wondered aloud.
Another shrug. "He takes after his father."
A thread of anxiety in Sherlock's tone made John still.
He narrowed his eyes. "Not, ah, your father?"
Sherlock kept his eyes on the telly. "No. Obviously."
John lifted his chin. Considered saying something. But he realized he had no earthly idea what to say, so he forced himself to settle back into the sofa, pretending to give his attention to the drama and tension on the screen.
John replayed the short conversation in his head, searching for any way he might have misinterpreted what Sherlock had said. But no. Sherlock had quite clearly stated that he and Mycroft had different fathers. That they were half-brothers.
And yet, despite all the animosity between the two, John could not remember Sherlock ever referring to Mycroft as such; it was always "brother," "my brother."
As John attempted to keep his head up in this particular torrent, he could feel Sherlock beside him, deliberately casual and disinterested to the point that John knew Sherlock was quite carefully awaiting John's reaction to this news.
He replayed conversations in his mind, scanning for any details about the Holmes family, but there had been very few in the short time since he'd fallen in with them.
And it had been a short time, four months now, but that time had been so packed with experiences, conversations, adventures, bickering over whose turn it was to buy the milk, patching Sherlock up with his doctor's kit in the kitchen, arguing about morality and murder and the electric bill. And yet.
Still more truth to swim in. Still something new to discover about each other.
And the realization came, then, a glass of water thrown in his face.
Sherlock loved Mycroft.
This man, who breathed facts in and breathed out truths, who always used the right words, the precise words to best convey his meaning, had made a choice at some point. However he may have discovered that he and Mycroft had different biological fathers, Sherlock rejected the term "half-brother" and chose "brother" instead, decided that "brother" was more precise, contained more truth; that their connection to each other, as fraught with tension as it may be, was stronger, even, than blood.
Must be. Even when those two were baring their teeth at each other and growling, neither one of them used their biological status as ammunition. John would have remembered. And for Sherlock to show such restraint, to hold back when he was trying to win an argument . . .
That was love.
And Sherlock had just chosen to tell John that, to show him that about himself.
And that was love too.
John blinked. Cleared his throat. Sherlock twitched beside him.
"Here," John said, then cleared his throat again when he heard how rough his voice sounded. He tossed a pillow at Sherlock and then scooted away from him towards the other end of the sofa.
"What?" Sherlock asked suspiciously as he caught the pillow.
"Go on. Lie down, you big giraffe."
Sherlock narrowed his eyes.
"You know you're going to fall asleep in ten minutes anyway," John said reasonably. "May as well be comfortable."
The tension left Sherlock's face, and his slight smile was knowing. He rearranged himself, lying on his side to face the film that neither of them were really watching, and attempting to tuck his legs out of John's way, but he felt John's hands on his ankles, lifting his feet and depositing them on the other side of his lap so that Sherlock's legs tucked around him instead. John left one hand across the top of Sherlock's feet and lay his other arm along the edge of the sofa.
They remained so in silence, letting the movie fill the flat with sound. It wasn't long before Sherlock snuggled a little further against John's frame, and soon he was fast asleep, having slipped into his post-case torpor.
Soon John's own eyes began to droop, his posture sagged.
His hand settled down on Sherlock's side, slipped to his belly, his fingers rising and falling as Sherlock breathed in and out.